The End Of The Whole Mess

I must say, Stephen King can really stretch out an apocalyptic yarn to truly epic dimensions, anyone who has read "The Stand" can attest to this. What the casual King reader (myself included) may not know, is that King can be very succinct as well.

"The End Of The Whole Mess" is a nice little short story, written by a man in the last few moments of life. Harold Fornoy writes in the style of a journal as he recounts his early childhood, growing up with his uniquely brilliant younger brother Bobby. Bobby Fornoy gets this idea in his head that mankind's greatest downfall is their tendency to aggression and proceeds to isolate and synthesize an anti-aggression agent that he discovered in the water supply of a nearby town. Bobby and Harold disperse the chemical by dropping into a volcano (of course) and proceed to infect the world with the chemical.

One of the great things about science is the fact that it adheres (usually) to a strict set of rules that prevent "Island of Dr. Moreau" type scenarios. Usually mad scientists are too busy satisfying their messiah complexes to be bothered with silly things like ethics. So Bobby forgoes the preliminary, small group studies and goes right for the global experiment. Unfortunately the chemical causes dementia and eventually leads to death.

I always like when the structure of a text helps drive the narrative, call it the post-modernist in me, but I think it's cool. As Harold's dementia progresses, he has an increasingly difficult time typing and communicating effectively, and his grammar disintegrates. These intimate moments give an insightful glimpse into the mind of someone suffering with Alzheimer's disease or dementia, and turn King's short story into something much more than simply a tale of the end of mankind. I really get the feeling that King has had very personal experiences with Alzheimer's and this story definitely describes the frustration that these poor souls must feel as their minds steadily slip away from them. King's story is short, but it still hits the reader right in the solar plexus.